


All Steve ever wanted

by Laura_Sinele



Series: Fictober 2020 [9]
Category: Captain America (Movies)
Genre: Alternate Universe - Canon Divergence, Angst and Feels, Angst and Romance, Angst with a Happy Ending, Best Friends, Boys In Love, Bucky Barnes Feels, Canon-Typical Violence, Childhood Friends, Declarations Of Love, Fights, First Kiss, Fist Fights, Friends to Lovers, Idiots in Love, Loss of Trust, Love Confessions, M/M, Post-Serum Steve Rogers, Pre-Serum Steve Rogers, Protective Bucky Barnes, Steve Rogers Feels, Steve Rogers Needs a Hug
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-10-10
Updated: 2020-10-10
Packaged: 2021-03-07 16:47:53
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,874
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/26930872
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Laura_Sinele/pseuds/Laura_Sinele
Summary: What did he want was a recurring question, often out of concern or exasperation. Alone and unwilling to admit he was scared, in his cot in the training camp, he comes up with so many answers. Later on, when his body has change and the whole country knows him as Captain America, the publicity stunt, and when he manages to rescue Bucky and his men, the question feels harder to reply.
Relationships: James "Bucky" Barnes/Steve Rogers
Series: Fictober 2020 [9]
Series URL: https://archiveofourown.org/series/1951714
Comments: 4
Kudos: 31
Collections: Fictober20





	All Steve ever wanted

**Author's Note:**

> Written for the Tumblr even Fictober, prompt 10: 'All I ever wanted'

_ ‘Steven, for God’s sake, what do you want? To crack your head open?’ _

_ ‘Mister Rogers, what do you want? To be the reason for every fight in this school?’ _

_ ‘Steve! What do you want? To get your teeth knocked out?’ _

_ ‘What do you want Mr. Rogers? Kill Nazis?’ _

Steve wanted to cry. To stop trying, to let himself be carried back home, to bed, and nursed back to health, relative as it might be. He wanted to admit that it hurt like hell, that merely living hurt like anything, and let himself take some painkillers, at least for tonight. Just for one night. He just didn’t know how. Alone in his barrack, away from his brothers in arms for his own good, Steve Rogers wanted to cry. But he didn’t. 

He found himself unable to decide if it’d had been better or worse with Bucky around. Seeing him in uniform stung twice: first because he was left behind, second because he couldn’t help but picture him dead in a muddy trench. Having him around in training, though, it would just have made him even weaker, whenever Bucky would stand up for him or call out on pranks. Because that’s what Bucky would do, and Steve couldn’t blame him. He understood the need to protect victims from bullies. It just made it harder for him to ignore the fact that he was the victim. He refused to be the victim. 

_ ‘What do you want, Steve? To get caught and arrested?’ _

He wanted to fight back. On his own. 

_ ‘What do you want? To die as soon as you set foot in a war zone?’ _

He wanted to keep others from dying.

_ ‘What do you want to prove?’ _

That he wasn’t a failure, a burden, a setback. That he belonged and he was enough as he was. 

_ ‘What do you want?’ _

To stop the bullies. To win the war. To die anonymously, doing something good, not in his ratty one room apartment, of malnourishment and lack of medicine, with only Bucky to mourn and remember him. 

It’ll be nice to see Bucky one more time before that happened, too. But Steve wasn’t a beggar, so he made himself stop wanting things, at least for that night. 

* * *

The story would tell that Steve found Bucky, saved his life, and they both instantly took command over the freed American prisoners, leading them successfully back to base camp, like a true example of the brotherly love and trust that cemented the only desirable kind of patriotism. 

It was a lie. A big, fat one. 

If there was something instantaneous in the moment Steve found and released Bucky, it was fear and distrust. If their way back to the base was anything, it was tense and awkward, with loyalties divided and side-eyed glances. It wasn’t until their last night setting camp that they managed to smooth things between them, and it wasn’t pretty at the beginning. 

The men were famished and exhausted, the weather was a pain, and the woods were a tough terrain to overcome. They’d walked for the rest of the night of their rescue until the next day’s dusk, letting the unrest settle in. Some of the soldiers were enthusiastically committed to Captain America. Some others wondered with suspicion where had that twat in tights from the bonds selling campaign had gotten that superhuman strength, and weren’t keen to respond to him rather than to Sergeant Barnes, who had fought alongside them. As per the Sergeant himself, he had just been through hell and back, and it was no surprise that he resisted to believe that Steve Rogers,  _ his  _ Steve Rogers, was now  _ that _ . 

Tension was thick as molasses when half of them stood firm and refused to keep going. It was true, they were very close to the camp, just a few more hours, but in their sorry condition a few hours of uneasy sleep now were way more attractive than the promise of a cold shower, food and a cot in the camp later. If there was still a camp. Steve yielded for the sake of an unsteady calm, and prepared for yet another night up, keeping watch on the 107th, wondering when would fatigue and sleep catch him. Watches were organised, their few weapons readied, and the luckiest two thirds of them went to sleep. While Steve rounded their makeshift camp clockwise, Sergeant Barnes did so in the opposite direction, keeping an eye on him. 

A few minutes later, Steve knew he was about to be ambushed by his best friend. His morale was so low, he just let it happen. A fraction of a second before the barrel of Bucky’s rifle touched the middle of his back, he had his hands up already in surrender. 

‘You have some explanations to do, Captain’

‘I am not a real Captain, you know that Sergeant’

‘They did some weird disturbing things in that laboratory where you found me’, followed Bucky, ignoring his remark. ‘Some of my men died after their bodies grew and swell impossibly fast. I don’t know much German, but I gathered they were trying to make them stronger, more than humanly possible. Kind of like you. So tell me, whether you are Steve Rogers or not, I don’t care: who do you work for?’

Steve let out a long, dragged sigh.

‘I think the most accurate answer would be Senator Brandt, but I’d bet I’m fired after this’.

There was a confused silence at Steve’s back.

‘What?’, Bucky grunted.

‘You see, they recruited me because a Doctor Erskine reckoned I was good testing material for an experiment that, well, ended up working and made me like this. But right then the Nazis came to steal the serum that did the trick, I ran after them, made it in the newspapers, but they escaped and professor Erskine died and the serum was lost, so Colonel Philips discharged me, and right after that the Senator asked me if I wanted to’, he paused, scoffed, ‘to ‘serve my country in the most important battlefield of war’ and I said’, he could barely keep himself from laughing, ‘I said, like an idiot I said ‘Sir, that’s all I want’, and he made me sell bonds in a ridiculous maillot. Oh Lord, look at me now’. 

He kept laughing softly, but continuously, volume being the only thing keeping him from looking completely deranged. From his back, Bucky hit him with the rifle’s butt.

‘Ow’, Steve complained.

‘On your knees!’, ordered Bucky at the same time. 

Steve complied with apathy, resting his hands at the back of his head. Bucky walked around to face him, pointing his gun between Steve’s eyes no more than an inch away.

‘What are you prattling about? Is this a joke to you?’

‘As a matter of fact, I think  _ I _ am the joke in this story. I finally get to be recruited, and it comes with the perk of turning my sickly, scrawny body into this, but then I am pushed into becoming the nation's laughing stock, not even allowed to combat. And right when I thought I was doing something useful by insubordinating and coming to rescue the 107th or whatever was left of it, my childhood best friend accuses me of treason and hits me with the butt of his gun!’

He disarmed Bucky before he finished talking, stripped the rifle and threw it away. He then loomed over a staggered Bucky, having a serious emotional meltdown over the fact that, while he was sort of disappointed at Buck not trusting him, he couldn’t help but notice he was the tall one now. 

Bucky backed up as Steve crowded him against a tree, but then he threw a right punch that Steve stopped with just enough strength to not hurt him. 

‘Come on pal, you’ve seen what I’ve become. You don’t want to do this’.

Bucky connected his other fist with Steve’s jaw and it literally hurt more Steve’s feelings than anything. 

‘I can do this all night’, Bucky said, his guard high and his eyes wide open with determination. 

Steve sighed again, standing at a safe distance, head down and hands on his hips. 

‘Oh, Bucky. No, you can’t. And for once, I actually can’. 

From the outside, it was a major fist-fight. Some of the men watched from the distance in mild concern. But in first person, each one of them found it was ridiculous for entirely different reasons. Bucky thought it was ridiculous because, come on, this was Steve, he never fought Steve, he got him out of fights. Also, Steve was fighting back, and also  _ holding back _ , which Bucky wasn’t able to decide on what was more disturbing. What he had decided was that if Steve could do now what he had seen him do back at the Nazi facilities, he could easily take Bucky down, but for some reason had choosen to not do it and drag this on. That probably meant that this Steve was really his friend Steve, and he was putting up with this nonsense just for Bucky’s sake. 

For Steve, the reasons were, in no particular order, that if you didn’t count the rescue operation, the last person he had punched before Bucky was an actor playing Hitler, and even that one was an accident —he got carried away after the audience’s enthusiasm. Also, that this was Bucky, and Bucky never punched him, he  _ prevented  _ him from being punched. So, what were they doing exactly?

They broke apart not long after starting, Bucky panting because of the physical exigence that was keeping up with his good old, athsmatic, skinny pal Steve, and Steve panting purely out of sympathy. Out of breath, Bucky said:

‘What are we doing?’

After a couple of seconds, Steve replied:

‘Beats me’

A big, annoying smile spread across Bucky’s muddy face.

‘No, I beat you’.

‘You think so? You want to go again?’

‘Any time, buddy’

Steve tackled him and he had to wrestle in the mud for his dignity. By then, the few soldiers still keeping an eye on them, turned their backs out of decorum. After a lot of scrambling and not entirely fair play, Bucky managed to pin Steve down by straddling him and holding his wrists on the ground over his head. Which is to say that Steve was letting Bucky do that deliberately. But Bucky’s triumphant grin slowly morphed into a soft rictus of worry. 

‘Are you ever going back to your size?’

Steve’s first instinct was to laugh, but he stopped himself in time to realise Bucky was serious. 

‘I don’t think so. But it’s still me. Same old me, I promise’.

Bucky looked at him intently, sweeping his gaze up and down his face.

‘Nah’, he said after a while, ‘new you is going to get all the girls’.

Steve shoved him off, not sure about why that comment irked him, and sat up to find Bucky had landed on his ass, laughing. 

‘Hey, Steve. Did you really tell that Senator that all you ever wanted was to sell war bonds?’

‘Shut up! He said the most important front of the war, I thought he meant here!’, replied Steve with a half smile. 

‘Alright, alright’, said Bucky, getting a hold of his breath. ‘So’, he waved his arm at the forest, the night, the cold, and the battered men, ‘is this all you ever wanted?’

‘I suppose. It’s not the greatest picture, but I was able to save their lives. In that sense I’m glad I was here’. He didn’t mention that he had saved Bucky too. That he would have tried to go and help any regiment, but he actually disobeyed a direct order and risked his life to do it only because this was the 107th, and that’s where Bucky was. 

Bucky bit his lower lip and nodded thoughtfully. After a while steeping in silence, Steve talked again, aiming to lighten the mood.

‘What about you, did you get all you ever wanted? A Sergeant, no less. Never congratulated you properly’. 

Bucky looked up sternly.

‘Who says this is all I ever wanted?’, he asked, and he sounded angry. 

‘Well we… we talked about it many times, it was your dream, joining the Army…’

‘It was never my dream! It was a career prospect for a lack of a better one’, he blurted. ‘You seriously thought this was my dream? No, this was yours, and I never understood why. This is a duty that I carry on gladly, but it’s not exactly something to hope for. And now that I think of it, with you here this is exactly the opposite of any dream or hope or prospect that matters, because all I ever wanted, the only thing I ever wanted was for you to stay put and keep away from trouble’. 

Steve clenched his jaw.

‘I can obviously hold my ground now, and I could before, regardless of… everything. You are just being condescending and overprotective, as always’.

‘No!’, yelled Bucky, his breath condensing in front of him, and a murmur of wings taking off in the night. ‘Hell, no, Steve. I’m not condescending, I’m realistic. How many broken bones, how many bruises that I had to lie about to your ma? Every time I couldn’t tell where you were, I knew you were in trouble. I never meant for you to be a coward or to look the other way. I just wanted you to not pick up fights on purpose because maybe one day I wouldn’t be there in time, or maybe one run to the hospital would be the last. Is it that hard to understand? I’ll say it again, clearer this time: all I ever wanted was for you to stay alive! What did  _ you  _ want?!’

Steve looked bewildered, his heart hammering in his ears. He barely heard his own voice when he talked. 

‘I wanted to stop the bullies. All of them. I didn’t want help. And I didn’t want you to keep getting in trouble for me’. 

Bucky shook his head and buried it in his hands. Then he let out a humorless laugh. 

‘Well, I guess we’ve both gotten our wish. You must be practically immortal. So I don’t need to lose sleep over you anymore, and you can take a jog up to Berlin and kill Hitler himself and all the bullies you find in the way’.

Steve smiled, wondering why it felt so sad. Before he could say something comforting and shallow, Bucky spoke in a low, weak voice:

‘I love you’, he said, looking mildly surprised with himself. ‘Please, don’t get yourself killed. That’s what I should have told you every time you got in trouble back in Brooklyn when you were a shrimp’.

Steve swallowed and hoped the serum would take care of his quickening pulse. He looked at their camp and saw men shifting in their improvised cots, and heard whispers about watch shifts changing. It’d been two hours already. He hoped for his voice not to break, but it did. He spoke through it anyway.

‘Your watch is over’, he muttered.

‘Is it? When is yours?’

‘I think now is a good time’, he smiled weakly, ignoring the jab. ‘Do you want to try and get some sleep?’

Bucky didn’t answer. He looked at him like he was both the most hurtful and wonderful thing in the world, and he didn’t move. Steve went to sit at his side and temptatively put an arm around his shoulders. 

‘It’s cold. We need to keep warm if we are going to stay still’, he explained at nobody’s request. Then he added: ‘I won’t die on you, Buck. I wasn’t going to when I was a runt, and I’m not going to now. And as far as I’m concerned, now it’s your turn to be reckless and hot-headed. You can pick all the fights you like. I’ve got your back and I’ll always will’. 

Bucky turned to look at him and brought their foreheads together.

‘You bet you do, pal. I was worried sick to leave you behind on your own, and look at you now, boasting your freaky, miracle muscles at me’. 

They laughed together at that, while tears ran down their cheeks, and they held onto each other until they calmed down. Steve took Bucky’s face, and he knew he really didn’t need to say anything, but he did anyway: 

‘I love you, Buck. I always did’.

Bucky leaned in and their lips met. Steve was stiff and clumsy, still shocked that he hadn’t misunderstood and this hadn’t gone horribly wrong, but he was relentless, and that realisation made Bucky, experienced, caring Bucky, smile into their kiss. Emboldened by that, or maybe because he felt the smile was sort of a dare, Steve made Bucky lie down gently and, fast learner as he was, mirrored his movements until he managed to take over and deepen the kiss, shy but determined.

‘Was about damn time!’, someone stage whispered from the camp.

There was some clapping and someone calling back:

‘Shut up and give ‘em a rest, would ya?’

Steve and Bucky didn’t hear a word of that.


End file.
